


Of Pirates and Pregnancies

by salanaland



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, C+ parenting skills, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Internalized Toxic Masculinity, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, POV First Person, Pirates, Postpartum Depression, Psychological Torture, Self-Hatred, Self-Medication, fanfic of a fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 15:25:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12986949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salanaland/pseuds/salanaland
Summary: Prequel to quills_at_dawn's The Minutiae of Right series. Edward reflects on how he got to be where he is, and what he intends to do about it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Of Dilemmas and their Cost | Part I](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11124549) by [quills_at_dawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quills_at_dawn/pseuds/quills_at_dawn). 



> So, first off, I really don't particularly like the whole alpha/beta/omega thing, it kind of actually squicks me. So I'm just as surprised as you might be to have these tags on a work of mine. But there's some things I really do like, and one is Shaytham, and another is writing fanfic of fanfic apparently... So I started reading quills_at_dawn's lovely work, and then I Had Some Questions. One thing led to another, and this started rattling around in my head demanding to be written. There's still more that Edward needs to say and do, and possibly Anne has a story to tell as well. So... we'll see.

**EDWARD**

Mary's right, o' course. It _was_ the only way to save our lives, and our lives sure needed saving. But her being right, that's no surprise. Mary's _always_ right.

 _Was_ always right.

I can _feel_ her still, the memory of her hands on me. Aye, like that night, but also months after, that half a minute we had, her and me, while the midwives examined Anne. Only half a minute because you'd have to be blind not to see the truth of it for all of us, even me with the build of an alpha and this mad absurdity of a child nestled into my belly.

More than one sniveling beta in that damn prison laughed at me. _Laughed_. Called me names I didn't even _know_ men could call omegas. Names I'd've called other omegas, tryin' to make people believe in Edward Kenway the big manly alpha.

Better to swallow my pride than choke on a rope, as Mary said. And she was always right.

When we were waitin' for those damn midwives to agree that yes, we three were with child, Mary'd leaned towards me and asked to touch it. _Him_ , I know now, but back then he was just the tenant in my body I wasn't sure about. And her _eyes_ , you know, they were so bright and eager, like I'd never seen, not even the night we made him. She was so _happy_ , so _proud_ of what we'd made, _who_ we'd made, and she _loved_ him. She never even got to see him, but she loved him.

"Mary..." I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. _Thank you_ , perhaps, or _I love you,_ but I didn't get the chance, and the next time I saw her I don't think she heard nothing I said.

It must've been like that for her all the time, with me never listening to a thing she said. I'm surprised she put up with me for so long. Truth be told, I'm surprised she thought to help me.

She'd figured me out, seen right through the spells of drinkin' and whorin' to the heats that brought them on, and at first I'd thought she was just a beta fellow tryin' to cozy up to the hidden omega. But then she unbound her hair on that windmill, and I could see the truth of her--that layer of it, anyway. I could have lived with her a hundred years and never understood her completely, and been the happiest fellow there ever was.

She'd told me she was an omega too, and I never really thought about what it meant, that o' course she'd be different from other women somehow, same's I'm different from other men. But then everything went to shit as she knew it would, and she found me in the Old Avery. I was tryin' to drink away the twinge in my guts and the flicker of need in my arse. With any luck, I'd drink myself insensible, puke on anyone who came too close, and wake up in a pile of leaves the next morning, no harm done, safe for another month.

"I've a proposition for you, Kenway," she'd said right in my ear, and it really didn't matter then what the one head o' mine thought, because the other was already up for anything she'd suggest. I could tell from her glassy eyes and the way she walked, almost like a regular woman, that she was in the same state as I was. And, well, I'm not exactly a cautious man at the best of times, and I certainly wasn't in any kind of overthinkin' mood then.

We went to her place, and we did a little of this and a little of that, and the way she was pokin' around inside of me, I'd've agreed to just about anything right then when she said, "You should bear my child, Kenway." I mean, o' course I laughed, because everyone knows omegas are to be used by alphas who like that sort of thing, knotted to every month 'til their bellies swell and then pray they survive the labor.

Mary didn't laugh. She got that look she always gets when she's angry at me, and took her hand back. And glared. Have you ever seen Mary Read glare?

Well, if you haven't yet, you won't.

And then she told me about omegas, things I'd never known, that we could _get_ and not just be _gotten_. That _she_ could, too, even without a cock to shove up my arse. Secret wisdom from one of them Assassins long ago with a magical talking fruit--not exactly sure what the fruit bit was about, to be honest. But the way she _looked_ at me, her eyes all hazy with heat, possessive and _wanting_ me and--I don't know if I can rightly say _why_ , but it sounded like a _really_ good idea at the time. Especially the way she used her fingers to get me wet and ready.

I know omegas are supposed to get all wet for alphas, but I never have. I mean, other than Anne. Point is, I never wanted some big burly fellow on my back, wedged in place inside me for an hour. But _Mary_ , well, Mary's special.

 _Was_ special.

Anyway, the point is, it was easier than I'd ever thought, and a lot more fun, to be gotten with child. Because it was Mary doing the getting. Even the actual getting, with the metal tube that she rammed in my arse and prodded with until she found what she was searching for, cursing all the while. When it slipped into place, it was something I've never felt before, so perfect and so _right_. I must've finished three times in her one hand while the other was dribbling her juices into the tube, into _me_. No idea what she was saying, though, I was howlin' the whole time about how good it felt. Like I'd been missing something my whole life, empty, and now it was _there_.

No use thinkin' too hard about it, though. That'll just start me longin' for something can't be had no more.

Maybe I was in love with her, maybe I still am, but it doesn't bear thinking on, not now. It was but the one night--she'd said we might miscarry if we kept on about it once our heats ended, and we both cycle quick, it's hard to be a pirate captain if you're laid up more than a day. And then she went about her Assassin business, and I went to meet Roberts. And when Roberts went to push me to my death, even though it galled me to say it, I told him to stop, I was with child. The look in his eyes then was the reason I'd never told nobody ever before.

Then there was other things, just as bad as I'd always feared, though not rough enough to hurt the babe. Guess he didn't want to bother with an enraged alpha coming after him for hurting his _property_. And then, with mad, cruel laughter in his mismatched eyes, he took me to Woodes Rogers, feigning that he just wanted to prove he was keepin' to terms of the pardon and turnin' in a dastardly pirate, a rebellious omega.

I learned in those months that there's a hundred ways to torture a man without leaving a single mark. Rogers wouldn't let them injure or use me, he's so smug about treating the omega with civility, but the threats they made.... They didn't just threaten me, they threatened my mother back home, they threatened Caroline.

They threatened my babe.

I lost it once, punched Rogers right in that mangled jaw of his, and for that I was gibbeted for a fortnight. I was half mad from weakness when they brought me to the prison yard for what Rogers and Torres said was an "educational experience". They looked so smug when the death sentence was pronounced on Mary and Anne, I couldn't help but laugh. I mean, the joke was really on all of us, because prison is an awful place to be up the duff. I was so hungry, and so sick, and so tired I could barely move. My skin peeled and my hair fell out and my teeth loosened, and on and on they kept askin' me where the Observatory was, and who the babe's father was.

I think Mary'd have liked how I described her. The bastard son of William Kidd, ten times the demon his father was, and if they laid a hand on me or the child he'd tear them limb from limb. Should be funny now, but isn't.

Well, a few months of this, and one night I'd been too mouthy and got locked in a special made gibbet to fit me and my belly. Gibbeting wasn't the worst thing they'd done to me, mostly just humiliating after a few hours when the babe'd kick and I couldn't stop the piss running down my leg. And nighttime was fine, pleasant even, to listen to the birds and all, and talk to the babe. If I hunched over just right, I could slip my hand down and rest it on him while I told him about the world, how beautiful the sea is and how he could find his heart's desire there someday, whatever it might be, it'd be there on the ocean. How brave and strong his... mother? father? is, how clever and wise, and how, being the bastard son of James Kidd, he has to be ten times the demon his father is, continue a proud family tradition. How you can't trust sheep with their fake-docile looks and their smelly wool. How he should pet dogs and cats and feed chickens in the street.

I promised him I'd take him sailing with Mary and Anne, I promised I'd get him a puppy, I promised I'd stay at home with him and not go running around looking for more gold and women. I promised him I'd rear him up right, to fight for a cause like Mary, not for gold and rum and reputation like me. I promised him I'd be a better man than ever I had been before. I promised him I'd never abandon him.

But o' course I failed him right away, after everything that night, sitting with Mary's body in the boat while Anne wailed with her pains, nothing really seemed to matter anymore, and I didn't even look at the babe I bore, just turned my face away and slipped out as soon as the Assassins left my hut with him to clean him up.

I don't remember much of the next month, mostly because I was sodden drunk. I remember stealing a fishing boat and going to Port Royal and killing every guard I recognized, but Rogers and Torres'd already cleared out. I remembered lurching across a tavern at Roberts, and then a hazy fever dream of Caroline, of Mary, of Thatch and Stede and all my dead friends I'd done wrong.

I remember lying in the sand, crusted in drying blood, and I wasn't sure whose, mine or someone else's. And I remembered Adé turning me over like a beached turtle, just as helpless and foolish, and I blubbered when I saw him, because he was _alive_.

He carried me onto my _Jackdaw_ , and I hid my face from my men so they couldn't see the unmanly tears streaming down my cheeks. I heard scattered cheers and I knew they weren't for me, I didn't deserve 'em. Adé put me to bed in my cabin, and I blubbered more when I felt the fancy bedding I'd stolen from a Spanish captain before sinking his worm-eaten tub.

When I woke just now, we were at Great Inagua, and I can see the Assassins are makin' themselves at home. Ah Tabai's come to the docks to see me, and I know he isn't the biggest fan of Edward Kenway, but his voice is soft and encouraging as he leads me to my mansion.

Anne's sitting in the garden, nursing a babe, and I'm staring at her because I remember hers blue and still in her arms, and the only thing louder than her sobs was my own howling as the labor pains began to rip me apart. And then I realize I'm looking at my son for the first time, _my son_ tucked into her arms. He's a sturdy little thing, arms like little hams and a tiny tuft of Mary's dark hair on the top of his head. His mouth slackens as he looks at me--he's got my mum's blue-gray eyes--and then he fills his tiny lungs and screeches like he's being tormented.

Can't say I don't deserve that.

But it does feel like being stabbed in my heart, to see my little boy hate me. I look desperately, helplessly, at Anne, and she manages to soothe him into quiet mutters of indignation and distrust and tucks him against my shoulder, where he promptly retches spoilt milk down my back.

He's perfect.

I'm crying again, holding him, and where I had nothin' but emptiness and pain in my heart, I have him. And he can't make up for Mary or anyone else I've lost, but he's somethin' and that's not nothin'.

He settles down against me, I guess he decided I'm all right after all. I don't want to disturb him, so I ask in a whisper, "What's his name?"

"You bore him, Edward Kenway," Ah Tabai tells me, "it's for you to name him."

"Mary's dead," Anne says, lookin' like her heart's all burnt out, "and we didn't know if you...we've been calling him Eddie, after you. In case you came back and wanted to..."

I make a really impressive fart noise. (I'll get to teach _my son_ how to make fart noises!) "I don't deserve that." They look all worried, probably that I don't want to claim him, so I tell them, "It'll be his middle name. But his first name should be something Mary would want."

But I can tell from lookin' that they don't know no more'n I do what she would've named him, so I say, "This was her life, the Assassins. I want her son to have an Assassiny name. So he can grow up and join you lot and everyone'll say, Jaysus, man, you've got the perfect Assassin name."

"Assassins have all sorts of names," Ah Tabai tells me all gentle-like, like my head's soft. "Edward Kenway could be an Assassin's name, if you wanted to make it one."

"Aye, and I will, but...look, you lot are all about birds, eagles, right?" My son's asleep in my arms, and I can almost see his bright future all around him. "So, and there's that tale of the jackdaw and the eagle, and I'm a sly jackdaw, and I want _him_ to be a strong and noble eagle. I want that for him. I want a proper name for my little eagle."

Ah Tabai says slowly, "You could name him Haytham. It means 'young eagle' in Arabic."

"Perfect!" I take him down from my shoulder. He fusses a little and I kiss the delicate skin of his precious forehead. "Listen up, little fellow. Your name is Haytham Edward Kenway, and you're going to be _amazing_. Just like your...just like Mary."

Anne smiles a little. "Smells like Haytham Edward Kenway just took an amazing shit."

I shrug. "Well, he's the son of two pirates. We're not known for smelling good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a little timeline trickery going on here, and I just realized that that means Edward dies exactly 10 years after Mary does, to the day. Neat? Maybe? But it's not like Ubisoft didn't fudge things a bit here and there, too. Ehh...*handwaving* it's an AU!


	2. Chapter 2

**ANNE**

It's been six years, now, that I've felt this way, almost all empty inside. Dreams are the worst, though. Or--perhaps it's the waking up that's worse. I'll roll over in the bed, seeking comfort from Mary after dreaming of her death, and she's not there.

_She's not there._

I closed her eyes and I dressed her, proper, like, in her bindings and her high-collared shirt and the trousers and boots and that ugly jacket she liked so much.

I used to have trouble with her clothes because I'd be so impatient to get to her skin underneath, to press kisses along the scant curves of her breasts, to slide my hands up her thighs and make her cry my name. She'd laugh at how I'd get her bindings so snarled, and I'd laugh at how hopeless she was with my hair. She'd unlace my stays and hide the linen tape, then when I couldn't find it, she'd smirk and tell me since I couldn't dress proper, I'd have to forego clothing altogether.

But on that island, with a newborn wrapped tight to me, I fumbled for hours, blindly, weakly, laying aside each rag and dreading what I'd find beneath. Her skin so cold in that sweltering excuse for a winter; sickly colors that had no place festering on her; a raw spiderweb of half-healed stretch marks left by the child who had saved her and killed her. It all kept blurring in the heat, while the babe slept and the desolate keening went on, and on, and on. And this time my fingers fumbled because I couldn't _see_. I wanted to, because I never would again, and I didn't want to, because I never would again.

The babe helped, I won't deny it, I'd curl up around him of a night and for a time I could fool myself that he was my own, but I'd wake sweating and screaming remembering the tiny blue face, the perfect little toes and fingers. _My_ son never cried, he never suckled nor shit nor pissed, and I only got to swaddle him the once. It seemed unfair, that I lost Mary and then the bit of Mary I'd kept safe in me, nine months I'd carried him and then he's lost in the bearing. And all I had of Mary was Edward's son, and Edward was taking his son to London.

Oh, it was for good reason, he was an Assassin by then and doin' good things, but I couldn't go, _wouldn't_ go, not _there,_ and he wouldn't let the lad stay.

So you may think I'm a terrible woman for not telling him that I'd found his daughter. Oh, not the young lady who'd slipped from her grandfather's clutches to meet her father for herself and make her own opinion of him. _She_ didn't need finding. I'm talking about the scrawny little thing with the hazel eyes like her mother, the unfortunate child who'd happened to be birthed in a dank prison, whose first breath caused Mary's last. Maybe I _am_ a terrible woman, or maybe I'm just a woman lost and grieving. I don't know. I don't care.

I'd learned plenty from the Assassins, living with them, and I put the pieces together, clues gleaned from chance remarks, things I'd noticed as Edward's quartermaster as he hunted down the Templars who'd captured us and killed Mary. I could have used his help, but he'd've taken _all_ the children, and I _needed_ something of Mary left to me. A week after he set sail, I went and I stole my girl from where they send the babes born in prison.

She was scared and small and mute, nothing like her brother who's always had the best of everything the Assassins could provide. It's taken years to get a little weight on her, to find her voice, to teach her to smile.

She is my everything. I've nothing else left.

Oh, I _work_ , I fill my days with good deeds and purpose. I help the Assassins and I sail, I practice with my cutlass and pistol, machete and axe. But none of it means anything to me, only my tiny Molly.

I've just tucked her into bed for the night when Ah Tabai's youngest student brings me a letter. The Mentor says he's a talented lad, a future Mentor himself, and he even gave him Mary's blades as a sign of his approval.

Matters nothing to me.

The letter's had quite a journey down the coast from the northern colonies, probably because it's addressed to my maiden name. I don't use that anymore, nor the name I was sentenced to death under. Lately I tend to go by Anne Kidd, the virtuous widow of a sailor lost to the waves.

It's true, in a way. We did bury Mary at sea. In her best. If I could've lit the ship around her and sailed her into the open sea, I would have.

It's a long letter, in a plain hand. It's from my brother. I've never met him, nor he me. When my father was sneaking around with my mother, he was also doing a brilliant job of servicing his wife. Perhaps she'd never have thought anything amiss except he had the colossal idiocy to have fallen for his wife's own maid. And then, when pressed to choose between his wife and legitimate twin sons, and his lover and illegitimate daughter, he ran off to Charles Town with Ma and me.

The boys got most of everything he had, the town house and most of his money, his investments he couldn't liquidate, most of his personal effects that he couldn't pack, plus their mother's family money and so forth. I mean, the property's still his but he's an ocean away from it and I'm a bastard daughter and so doubly barred from inheriting it, so I've never begrudged them one inch of it. I had his love and his happiness, and looking back now, that was more precious than I ever realized when I threw it away at sixteen to run off to the West Indies with the wrong James.

Still, never would've met the _right_ James if I hadn't.

But I'm curious about my brothers, can't say I'm not, so I read this letter with interest. It's from the younger of the twins, I discover, by five minutes, and he'd gone to sea, like me, but proper like, on a merchant ship. Moved to Dublin for a bit, lived with his wife's parents, but came to the colonies for better trading opportunities. Celebrated by promptly impregnating his wife, then lost her to childbirth. It's a miracle the boy survived at only seven months, and the wet nurse has been taking good care of him, but my brother must return to sea to put food on the table and needs someone to rear his boy proper. He wants _me_ to move up north and do so.

I manage not to write a scathing retort along the lines of, "what fool would trust a famous criminal with their precious child?" and arrange to meet him in Havana to discuss this.

Rhona teases me about meeting a man until I point out he's my brother. Then she's annoyingly nosy, which is almost worse, but I tell her he's not a Templar and so not her type, and she agrees to watch Molly while I go to the pub we're to meet at.

He's not what I expected, quite. Dark haired and quiet, with a properly fat baby on his knee. That was unexpected, that he'd bring the lad all the way to Havana to meet the wayward aunt, but it was a good idea. I'd been thinking of turning him down, but the sweet little cherub charms me thoroughly, and I find myself sending an apologetic note to Ah Tabai and packing Molly's things, and we leave on the morning tide. She's delighted with her baby cousin--of course, he hasn't started to cut his teeth yet--and, well, I could do worse. It's respectable like, a widow raising her nephew, and it's only a few years. When the boy's old enough, he'll join his father at sea, and then perhaps Molly and I will cut our hair and do the same. Who knows?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't mind me, I'm just over here flipping off Ubisoft and what they said about who is and isn't related to Anne.
> 
> Also MARY/ANNE OTP FOREVER, I CANNOT WRITE THEM NOT TOGETHER.


End file.
